Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to help ensure that older people can engage in community sports in the West Midlands.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, including older people, should have access to and benefit from quality sport and physical activity opportunities.

Sport and physical activity play a vital role in driving positive public health outcomes by preventing, and helping to treat and manage, a wide range of health conditions as well as providing wider benefits, for example, in tackling loneliness.

Sport England, our Arm’s Length Body for community sport, are investing up to £250 million of National Lottery and Exchequer funding into more than 90 Place Partnerships across England, including Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. The programme works in a targeted way with local areas to understand and overcome the specific barriers in their communities to getting people active. Birmingham and Solihull were part of the first local delivery pilot areas the scheme is based on.

Sport England also provides support for grassroots sport through the Movement Fund, which offers crowdfunding pledges, grants and resources to improve physical activity opportunities for the people and communities who need it the most, including older people.